Crafting using everything from Aida to zips and everything in between.

The make I thought would never end…

It’s a momentous day in crafting here; I have finally managed to finish off a project that has been on going for the past year. It has taken me so long to do that I didn’t think I would ever get it finished!

I made my first patchwork quilt a few years ago as a gift for a friend’s little one, just using a square pattern in different shades of blue. I was very impressed with the end result, so impressed in fact, that I decided to embark on the task of making one for myself. I don’t think I fully realised the commitment I was taking on at the time! However this project was great for using up all my odd bits of fabric, something that was starting the take over the house!

As I had already done a quilt using squares I decided to try something different and use hexagons, with a different colour of fabric used on each full round of the quilt. I used a paper hexagon template and tack-stitched the fabric around it to retain the hexagonal shape until it was sewn into the quilt.

Once I had enough to start sewing together the quilt I picked my centre hexagon and then stitched another hexagon one to each side, this time in a different colour to form the next round. I hand stitched them together by placing their right sides together and sewing down the seam.

I would have needed hundreds of paper templates for the whole quilt; so instead, I attached a few rounds of hexagons together and then recycled the inner templates, keeping in mind to always leave the outer ring intact. I continued adding rounds to the quilt until at its widest point it was the width I was happy with. I then squared off the quilt by using hexagons to infill the corners.

Once I had stitched all the hexagons together, I needed to assemble the quilt front onto a backing fabric with some wadding in between. I used a king sized flat sheet as a backing sheet as this was the size of quilt I wanted. I then tack-stitched all three elements (quilt front, wadding and backing sheet) together so they wouldn’t move as I sewed them together. Next, I machine-sewed the three pieces together. I machined a straight line out from each edge of the inner 6 hexagons, which were attached to the initial central hexagon, to the edge of the quilt. This probably could have been completed by hand, but I found it just too big to manage in this way.

Once the three elements were sewn together I hemmed around the edge by folding the plain backing sheet up on to the quilt so that there was a plain edge the whole way round.

Finally… The quilt was finished! I am so happy with it – it has come out even better than I initially thought it would. It’s perfect for the upcoming winter months and it will definitely brighten up a cold wintery evening.